


An Uncharted World

by Caryl (Starshone)



Category: Uncharted
Genre: Birthday Presents, Canonical Character Death, Friendship, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-16 15:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starshone/pseuds/Caryl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short fics inspired by <i>An Uncharted World</i> remixes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. yes. Yes, always, yes.

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [An Uncharted World](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/23949) by various. 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ["Will you still love me when I am a spooky ghost?"](http://anunchartedworld.tumblr.com/post/49371324566/yes-yes-always-yes)

Maybe _Would You Ever_ is a bit of a backwards way to play _Have You Ever_. Maybe they don’t even have booze up here (there was some on the train, but it was on one of the carriages lost when Nate blew it up). But they need a little fun, and both the ridiculous suggestions of situations and the illicit use of their dwindling supplies fit the bill, and honestly, with all the tension that’s hovered thick between them ever since Borneo, something silly and low stakes is a huge icebreaker.

So she thinks he’s joking.

She blames the ‘love’ on the altitude and the ‘anything goes’ mood they’ve been actively fostering in this game, because they’ve had enough sense to not let love come up until now, and she would have thought Nepal, even before the train, would have shattered any delusions of love. As for the ghost part, they’ve both been half-joking, half-serious about expecting Lazarevic to kill them any day now; if anything, she just wonders in which universe Lazarevic would kill Harry first instead of her, the more annoying thorn in his side.

So she laughs, and drinks her juice, and tells him that he wouldn’t make a very spooky ghost, that even as a ghost he’d just be an ass.

He laughs too, but it’s strangely hollow.

-

"Hey," says Nate. “Are you okay? You’ve been staring out that window for the last thirty minutes, and I didn’t think the yak was _that_ interesting."

Chloe glances at him, discovers she’s got a crick in her neck.

"I was just thinking about a joke someone made once," she says. “Wondering if they might have been serious."

"Uh, sure," Nate says after a moment. “Anyway, I brought you some juice."


	2. this is it: the apocalypse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ["I'm pretty sure this whole zombie fad is dead. ... but for how long?"](http://anunchartedworld.tumblr.com/post/50431485204/zing)
> 
> ["My grandfather died in a war. My father died in a war. Me? I'm holding out for a zombie attack."](http://anunchartedworld.tumblr.com/post/41627488286/meet-me-in-the-street)
> 
> Nate accidentally crashes Chloe and Charlie's movie night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Between _2_ and _3_ , after the Elate split. Vague reference to ["Candyman"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/552041) but you don't need to have read it. Title from "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons.

The problem with asking his friends to help him get the decoder back, Nate thinks furiously, is that they're not as focused as he is. First there was trick-or-treating, and now...

"A zombie movie?" he demands. "Seriously?"

"You scheduled this meeting for movie night," Chloe says, doing that thing where she says something ridiculous in a very reasonable tone of voice, which he used to like but now just finds irritating.

"Date night, more like," Nate retorts.

Chloe frowns and uses the moment to make a dramatic exit to the kitchen, but it's Charlie, looking uncomfortable, who says, "It's not a date," and Nate had been joking but now he's convinced it's true. Of _course_ his friends would hook up while ~~his marriage has fallen apart~~ there are bigger things at stake.

"Anyway," Charlie continues, trying to brush past the moment. "We've told you everything we found out this week, I'm still waiting to hear back about that job lead, and your flight's still cancelled."

"One inch of snow," Nate says darkly, for the nth time that night; Chloe pats him on the shoulder as she returns with a bowl of popcorn.

"So you might as well stay over," she says, putting the popcorn on the coffee table and sitting back down on the couch. "Instead of sulking alone in your hotel room."

"I was going to _work_ , not sulk."

"You can work here," Charlie points out, "and not pay out the arse for Internet and snacks."

Nate considers.

"I don't want to be a third wheel -"

"You're not," they say together.

"Uh-huh," he says, unconvinced.

"Look," says Chloe, picking up the tablet they've been showing him things on and passing it to him. "You can use this to follow up on anything online, and when you need to take a break, we'll be here."

"I won't," he says, but he takes the tablet anyway.

Then he pauses, because it has a very similar flame decal to the one on Chloe's gun.

"Chloe, how is this thing still working?"

"It's only two weeks old," Charlie stage whispers. "Give it time."

Chloe rolls her eyes and starts the movie. Nate manages to tune out both the dialogue and most of their chatter well enough for the first twenty minutes as he taps around, tabbing between Heathrow's flight status page and his search. It's not anything aural that distracts him: It's an alert saying Elena's played a word in Words With Friends.

He'd had no idea Chloe and Elena played together.

His already frayed concentration gone, he puts the tablet down and reaches for the popcorn. Charlie passes it over with a smile.

"Joining us in the land of the undead, are we?"

Trying to be a half-decent guest, Nate glances up at the TV and finds himself instead blurting out, "That's not even what zombies look like."

"And you would know because..." Chloe prompts him.

"Because I've seen the real thing," he says. "They got an old friend of mine, and they're what really killed Sir Francis Drake."

"Right," says Chloe, looking somewhat skeptical. "Anything like the Guardians, or the Smoky Gods?"

"Now _I_ feel like a third wheel," Charlie comments to no one in particular.

"More like the Smoky Gods," he decides. "Not as smart as the Guardians. They were these - slippery naked guys on all fours, cursed by El Dorado."

"This sounds better than the film," says Charlie.

"They aren't as easy to kill as the movie's making out," Nate gripes, as someone headshots a zombie onscreen. "After I figured it out, I ran into way too many of the things when I was trying to get back to Elen--"

He stops himself short; neither of his friends meet his eyes. There's a long and tense silence between the three of them, the only sound coming from the movie, before Chloe finally says, "They can't do stairs? I know whose flat I'm coming to in a zombie apocalypse, then."

Nate breathes, and tries to concentrate on the film.

 

"That was fun," Nate admits the next morning, pulling his coat on to leave. "More fun than sulking alone in my hotel room. And, uh, sorry about the sulking."

Smiling, Charlie waves him off.

"We're watching _Gladiator_ next week," he says, in a way that sounds a little like an invitation.

"Oh, good," says Nate. "Because I'm pretty sure that whole zombie fad is dead."

"But for how long?" Charlie offers with a sly grin.

Nate snorts, appreciative. He hesitates before asking, "Are you and Chloe...?"

Charlie shrugs.

"Does it matter?"

"I guess not?" Nate hazards a guess. "But... I'm glad you guys are happy. If you are."

"I'm happy," says Charlie, looking very much like he's trying not to laugh. "Last I checked, she's happy. Happi _er_ when you're -"

"Taking a break, I know," he sighs. "It's just -"

He doesn't have the words for it. He never did with Elena, and he doesn't have them for Charlie, either.

"Important," Charlie fills in. "Got it."

"Yeah," Nate says, grateful for the show of understanding even if he doesn't think Charlie _really_ gets it.

"So," says Charlie. "Let me know if you get stuck in traffic, because bright eyes dropped her phone in the shower yesterday. And I'll let _you_ know when Talbot calls back."

Nate blinks, and decides he doesn't want to know what Chloe was doing with her phone in the shower.

"Thanks a lot," he says instead. "Seriously."

"Get out of here before your flight gets cancelled again," Charlie says with a smile, and Nate blanches at the thought.


	3. Thirty-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ["Two years in a row now, someone I love died on my birthday, and my party was cancelled."](http://an-uncharted-world.tumblr.com/post/79565298372/fool-me-once-shame-on-you)
> 
> Chloe gets one present.

Chloe's contemplating the four large brass structures on the floor when there's a light touch to her elbow.

"What're you doing?" Harry asks, stepping forward to join her.

"Maybe if we move these in front of the animal carvings," she starts, crossing to the center of the room to indicate them in turn. "There's these circles in the floor that look like they might move -"

"We can try it in a sec."

He reaches into his pocket and offers her something small and multicolored which on closer inspection turns out to be a beaded bracelet.

"What's this, then?"

"Happy birthday."

Chloe blinks, because with all the crap that's happened she'd genuinely forgotten, and moreover: "How'd you know?"

"You dropped your real passport in Sabiha International," he explains, and her dwindling respect for him raises just a fraction, because she doesn't remember dropping it, let alone him putting it back in her bag, so he might have pickpocketed her and he definitely put it in without her noticing. "I know it's not much, but..."

"No, it's fine," she says, but that sounds a bit pathetic, so she adds, "It's lovely. I wasn't exactly expecting anything."

"You deserved _some_ thing," he replies, simple and painful in its sincerity.

Chloe's lost for a reply. Before she can think of anything, she hears footsteps, and she pockets the bracelet in case it turns out to be Lazarevic.

 

They're waiting for the village doctor to examine Elena, surrounded by people who don't speak English. Some of them are curious but some of them are just staring at her with suspicion, and she can't blame them. Chloe starts unpacking her pockets to avoid their gazes, telling herself she's not looking for bits of resin: Dirt, a few spare bullets by some miracle, a bracelet?

"What's that?" Nate asks, and Chloe's momentarily glad to see that even with his heartbreaker probably in some critical condition, his curiosity remains undampened.

"Birthday present," she says, and he looks blank, but remembrance abruptly dawns on his face a fraction of a second before she adds flatly, "I'm thirty-one today."

" _Chloe_ ," he says, wrapping his arms around her. Too tired to resist, she buries her face in his shoulder and bursts into tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry's found and cleaned up the [Tibetan Mala Beads](http://uncharted.wikia.com/wiki/Tibetan_Mala_Beads).


	4. wicked dastardly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ["I'm tied to the tracks. But I don't need you to rescue me. I need you to be the train."](http://an-uncharted-world.tumblr.com/post/102537496643/wicked-dastardly)

A small part of you hopes they'll kill you first.

The larger part wants revenge, of course: Taking Nate down with you, and maybe that reporter with her sanctimonious questions. (Not Chloe, never Chloe.) A tiny part of you is thinking about just ending it now. But a small part wants to die at someone else's hand.

You'd deserve it, really, you know that. You always were a shit friend, a shit partner, and the last few months you've been the worst. You're the first to raise your gun and shoot when no one expects it. You say _yes_ to using someone you care for as a hostage. Being killed by the people you've hurt is the only way you can make up for that now.

They'd make it fast, once they see what Lazarevic has done to you, and that's more than you'd deserve. Nate, who greeted you with a bear hug after years away. The reporter, on her mission of mercy. Chloe, who never plays with her food. A small part of you wants that faster death they'd give you instead of being blown apart into pieces of pain.

But the larger part can't shut up. The larger part is insulted when the reporter offers to help you. The larger part holds up the grenade when Nate tries too, and the larger part drops it before he manages to shoot you.

Yes, you are tied to the tracks, but you're also your own train.


End file.
